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Dessert

Angie's Indian Pudding

A thick pudding made from milk, Indian meal, molasses, and optional raisins or apples, baked slowly.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Molasses and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,577 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Angie's Indian Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the pudding base

  1. Bring 1 quart of milk to a boil in a pot.

  2. Mix the Indian meal with a little cold milk until smooth.

  3. Add the meal mixture to the boiling milk.

  4. Stir until it thickens.

  5. Remove from heat.

Finish and bake

  1. Once partially cooled, stir in the molasses, remaining cold milk, and salt to taste.

  2. If desired, add raisins or sliced apples.

  3. For a richer pudding, mix in chopped suet.

  4. Transfer to a high earthenware pudding pot and bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) for at least 3 hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Molasses + raisintop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,577 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Milk + raisintop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (acides aroma).

  3. Milk + molassestop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together7,243 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Indian meal
Cornmeal thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the pudding its body and texture.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the cornmeal thickens and that slowly bakes into a custard-like pudding.
Molasses
Adds sweetness, deep flavor and a darker color to the pudding.
Suet
Adds fat for a richer, moister pudding texture.

The step that matters

Stir the meal into the boiling milk and keep stirring until it thickens. Cornmeal added to hot liquid can clump if not stirred well, and it needs steady stirring to thicken evenly. Mixing it smooth with cold milk first helps prevent lumps.

Swap the raisin

The recipe marks raisin as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, molasses):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Raisinthe original
  4. Applefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, molasses. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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